21 Facts About Michael Land

Michael Z Land was born on 1961 and is an American video game composer and musician best known for his scores for various games produced by LucasArts.

Michael Land was born in the North Shore area north of Boston, Massachusetts.

Michael Land's parents enrolled him in classical piano lessons when he was five, and he continued in these until he chose to stop out of frustration at age twelve.

Michael Land started to play the electric bass guitar a couple of years later.

Michael Land focused more on improvisation, and he played with several bands throughout high school.

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In 1979, Land enrolled in the music program at Harvard University, where he concentrated on electronic music.

Michael Land rekindled his interest in classical music, particularly that of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Michael Land broadened his study to Renaissance polyphony, and he studied computer programming.

When Michael Land graduated from Mills in 1987, he took a job as a digital technician at an audio signal processor manufacturer called Lexicon.

Michael Land worked for the company for three years, a period he spent honing his programming skills and writing operating system software for the company's MIDI remote controllers.

Michael Land became the first in-house audio programmer and musician at the company, which had mostly outsourced its sound production duties to third-party developer Realtime Associates in the previous few years.

Michael Land found it nearly impossible to synchronize music with action in the game.

Michael Land began work on LucasArts' iMUSE interactive music system to solve this problem.

The project was more daunting than Michael Land had anticipated, so he brought in his friend, Peter McConnell, to help.

Michael Land headed the company sound department, and since he was preoccupied with iMUSE, he hired another friend to the company, Clint Bajakian, to take over some composing projects.

Michael Land worked on several titles, including more Monkey Island games and various projects based on Lucasfilm properties.

Michael Land continues to widen his repertoire, and he is currently studying classical cello and violin.

Michael Land worked on the Telltale installment of the Monkey Island series, Tales of Monkey Island, and reprises his role in the new Return to Monkey Island with Clint Bajakian and Peter McConnell.

Michael Land begins each project by reading over production notes for the game and then deciding on a musical style with the game's producers.

Michael Land's soundtracks are as varied as the games they accompany.

Michael Land himself cites The Dig score as the work that comes closest to his own personal style.